Pretty much once a week I have a patron rush up to me and whisper “ooooHH! I saw a missed connection about you!” and pretty much once a week someone from our branch consults craigslist or The Stranger and finds that indeed, someone at Capitol Hill was being admired. But rarely is it a librarian. Usually it’s a young, dewy shelver. Or a smiling, also young clerk. It’s never me, because I work with a lot of hot, young people.

Imagine my suprise, however, when a neighborhood type person rushed up to me and said “ooooHH! I saw an ‘I Saw U’ ad about you! It was definitely you because of the tattoos!” I verified the information, being a thorough librarian, and learned that alas, my moment had finally come. I missed the edition of The Stranger this was printed in, so I can’t clip it for posterity as as Pop Culture Librarian suggested. Instead I will post it to my blog so I can visit it on days when I’m feeling frumpy and demonic.

Angelic librarian @Cap Hill branch
You: gorgeous brunette woman with tattoo on inside of left wrist. You helped me find A Twist of the Wrist (motorcycling not cooking) on 1/23. I finally got my wits and came back, but your shift was over. Let’s meet for a drink and conversation.

P.S. Even if I were single I wouldn’t contact the guy: he was cute, but when I asked him if he wanted the book about cooking or the one about motorcycles he made a face and said “motorcycling” in a super macho way. Doesn’t he know women like men who can make them waffles?

An email from a friend reminded me that I’d been Facebook status-ing (we need to come up with a verb for that) about job changes but never quite explained what was up.

So here’s what’s up:
Due to the budget cuts required by the city, the branch library hours changed pretty dramatically. In order to staff the new hours, there was some restructuring, or “management initiated transfers.”

My transfer was not to another neighborhood branch, but to the Central branch downtown. I’m going to be working in General Reference Services, on the 5th floor (the Mixing Chamber). It looks like I’ll spend a lot of my off-desk time online answering questions via QuestionPoint, txt, and chat reference. It’s going to be a big change, switching to 100% reference work.

When I first found out I was pretty upset – I’ve worked with the same coworkers and community of patrons for 3 years, and I’m very attached. In this new position I won’t be doing any outreach, programming, or work with teens and schools. I also won’t get the same interactions with patrons – no more reader’s advisory (unless I’m filling in on the Fiction Desk), no Rules of Conduct violation discussions (oh wait, I won’t miss those).

All in all, it’s been a big upheaval for myself and those I work with, but change isn’t always terrible and I’m staying positive.

We’re always thinking of new names for the cats, because cats lend themselves to different names. Usually we forget the new name a few minutes after it’s proposed, but sometimes the names stick.

A few evenings ago, Sky was telling me about an article he’d read in the New York Times fashion magazine about Russian and Ukraine bouncers who “face check” people waiting to get in – which means they judge them based not just on how they look but on how expensive their clothes are, whether they are famous or political, etc. He said there was a big deal Face Checker named Pasha Face Check. Obviously this needed to be a new name for Gus, who would be really good at that job.

The Real Pasha Face-control

I think we’re going to stick to Pasha Facecheck because it sounds tougher than Pasha Facecontrol (also seen spelled Face Control or Face-control). Gus is quite pleased with it.

In other “trying to find stuff out” news, my massage therapist, Bevin, has some candies in her office. I took one last week and it was DELICIOUS. I saved the wrapper so I could possibly locate this delicious candy for myself. The wrapper has “Barcelona” on it, along with an address and a non-unique business name (Google searches showed 100+ places with the same name). It’s not from Papabubble, although any Google-fu for hard candy shops in Barcelona seem to favor it.

The other two things I’m researching right now are:
1. a “good midcentury novel” that isn’t by John Updike (for Sky)
and
2. a delicious place for treats (specifically cake, but I’m open) in or around Alameda – I’m visiting Jaime this coming weekend and I need to supply us with sugary goodness – all my good hookups are in SF and I’d like to welcome her to her new ‘hood by finding the perfect place

All anyone’s been able to talk about for the last few days is the heat. Yes, it’s hot. In fact, it’s really hot, considering we live in Seattle. Luckily we have lots of air conditioned libraries in which people can chill out and be neighborly. I’m really enjoying meeting all of the people who don’t normally come into our buildings: so many amazed people asking if the library cards are really free and can you seriously rent more than 3 DVDs at a time?

I’ve had to tell a lot of people to put their shoes on, which is kind of a bummer. I understand it’s hot and your tootsies are feeling infringed upon, but it’s a public place. It’s a dirty public place. I wouldn’t want to put bare flesh to any surfaces, you know?

The cats are lying around like dead fish, mewing imploringly at us when we make eye contact. Gus is afraid of the fan, so there’s no use in moving it closer to him. He does, however, like to cuddle up to an ice pack, so that’s good.

The thing I’m not down with is the hot at night situation. I’m also not down with this seemingly random rash of lady assaulting – first a dude knives and rapes and kills down in South Park and then I find out a girl was sexually assaulted on my city block. This after I’ve spent weeks alone with open windows, all blasé and not caring.

Sky’s made a dinner pasta out of vegetables from our long-suffering garden. I think it’s down to 94° by now, so maybe the cats will join us for dinner.

P.S. My vacation was lovely and I’ll write about it soon, pinkie promise.

Girl Frankenstein’s Monster! Girl Frankenstein’s Monster! That’s me.

It’s been almost a month since my last post. I’m sorry about that. I haven’t got any good excuses, so I won’t throw any out. Instead it’s just been a lot of day to day getting on with things, you know the type.

Birthday Hoopla
My birthday was lovely — we thought we’d be caretaking on the actual day, but in the end we got a last minute trade and were able to stay home. To celebrate Sky and I made fish tacos* complete with radishes, cabbage, limes, avocado, and that yummy creamy sauce. I worked the day after my birthday, and then that Sunday we had a nice picnic in Cal Anderson park w/ a good assortment of friends.

Surreal Thursday
So I work at two branches of my library. They balance each other nicely, the two branches: one is heavy traffic, more urban, with lots of issues with mental health and drug use, while the other is in a residential neighborhood and the biggest issue is noise during storytime. Last Thursday, however, was like Freaky Friday. Freaky Thursday. Whatever. There were all sorts of weird goings on at the normally mellow library – all. day. long. This is the same day that Michael Jackson (and poor forever 2nd billing Farrah Fawcett) died. So the day was filled with weird security issues, punctuated with people coming up to the reference desk and saying to me “Michael Jackson is dead,” and waiting for me to argue with them or tell them it was a joke. Usually they just wanted to have someone say “Yeah, weird/sad/unexpected, huh?”

The day capped off with a totally whacked out man running to the desk, telling us that a man with a knife was cutting up a watermelon in the men’s bathroom. He said he was pretty sure the man was praticing on the watermelon and intended to come after us any second. The whacked out man was really whacked out and displayed all the signs of crazy, so my coworker laughed it off as the man left, running (for his life) to bus stop. I, however, knew the day was a contender and suggested we check the bathrooms on the off chance that whacked man was right. Sure enough, there was a man with a huge knife cutting up a watermelon in the sink.

Fakery & Lies
I’m going to a weddin’ this afternoon, and the dress I’m wearing is shortish – it shows off my knees and legs. My knees and legs are not just paler than pale, they are bruised and have scratches and scars of unknown origins all over them. I have the legs of a 8 year old boy, truth be told. So last night I thought I’d try out some of that new fangled tanning spray in an attempt to make my injuries look less garish against my snowlike flesh. What a mistake. I followed all of the instructions, but still woke up this morning with weird orange knees and a random streak down one side of my calf. I don’t know how that worked since I sprayed evenly over my legs after exfoliating and all of the junk. I’ve been applying lotion with alpha hydroxy in it every 30 minutes or so, which is only making the orange parts a little pinker. I’m going to be a hot mama this afternoon, and Sky is going to tease me about this for the next 5-8 years.

* I’ve been eating fish about once a month in an attempt to get more Vitamin D and those fancy oils you’re supposed to have in your system. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.